Bread and Butter Pudding @ Lorraine's Patisserie - 30 July 2013

I was feeling a bit hungry today in the afternoon so I decided to duck out for an afternoon treat at the Merivale owned Lorraine’s Patisserie (Shop 5, Palings Lane, 320 George St, Sydney), which is located in the Ivy complex. Lorraine Godsmark is a renowned pastry chef in Sydney having spent 10 years as the head pastry chef at Neil Perry’s Rockpool and 8 years at now closed Yellow Bistro and Food in Potts Point. So obtaining the services of Lorraine is a massive coup for Justin Hemmes and the Merivale group.

Bread and butter pudding ($9)

The snack that I had today was the Bread and Butter Pudding. This is my favourite item at Lorraine’s Patisserie (out of many other great pastries including rhubarb pie, New York cheese cake and the mascarpone cake).  

At $9, the bread and butter pudding is priced at a premium but you are paying for quality. I find this pudding so incredibly delicious and moreish. I am a massive sucker for anything that has an awesome custard. There is just something so satisfying about soft buttery bread soaked in a tasty, gooey, egg custard. I also enjoyed how this pudding was topped with 2 chunks of toasted bread, which was great to contrast the soft and mushy texture of the rest of the pudding. The only problem was that it was a bit hard hard to eat the toasted bread with a fork without creating a mess. I had to pick it up with my hands in the end and created a mess any way...

Besides the custard, what sets this bread and butter puddings apart from other ones are the large chunks of caramelised apple, which were nice and soft, sweet and slightly tart. The apples just taste so great with this pudding! I wanted to lick the container clean afterwards to savour every last bit of that yummy custard, but I did not want to make a fool of myself in the office!

As you may know, Lorraine’s signature dessert is the Date Tart ($15). This is a dessert that I have wanted to try since Lorraine’s Patisserie opened and I have yet to see this delectable tart available. And I spin by a lot! I have no idea when they have it on. Guess I will need to keep looking. You might say that $15 is very expensive for a tart. But if you consider that the date tart is a signature dessert at Rockpool, a 3-hatted restaurant, and the painstaking labour that is involved in making the tart, $15 is not such a bad deal. At least it would save me from having to book a meal at Rockpool to try the famed tart. Maybe one day I will actually see the date tart available at Lorraine’s and be able to try it.